17, sanity check my financial plan
I am 17m and will be turning 18 in May of this year. I currently have 5000 in savings and hope to have 1800 extra to invest by then. I work as a Patient Care Technician in a hospital part time. When I hit college I will be a year ahead and will graduate at age 21 with a bachelors in Nursing and will have 0 college debt because my father is a professor at the college and I get to go for free including room and board. During the first two years of college I will be working part time (16 hrs. Per week) at the hospital at around 18 bucks an hour as an ER tech. I will live at my parents house after I graduate and work as a new grad ER nurse in Des Moines, Iowa making hopefully >$70,000 a year. I will live at my parents house for 2 years and make money, then I will go to Physician’s assistant school (~100k of debt), during which I will not work and will have to pay tuition. That will take 2 years, and I suspect I would like to live on my own during that time.
My question is, how much money and where should I invest those few thousand dollars when I turn 18 in a few months? I want my money to be untouched until I retire probably. How much should I keep and how much should I invest? During college and those next couple years I won’t have much necessary that I have to pay for, so how much should I put aside to pay for Physician’s assistant school? How much should I invest? Since I’m living at my parents, could I invest 90% of that money? How reasonable is it to live on my own and pay for school without working? Being an ER physician’s assistant like a I plan have an average of >$200,000 which is far more than I’m used to being the child of teachers. So reasonably couldn’t I invest like 80k per year and still have a family if I just live by the same metrics as my family does now? Any advice would be appreciated. I just want to set all my kids up and myself for later in life.
Are there any other finances during my early 20’s I need to think about?
How should I change my investing strategy as my income jumps from 20k to 70k to 200k?
If you could restart at 18 with my situation, what would you do?
Thank you!
Posted Jan 10, 2026, 12:34 AM UTC